So, who likes the new-look Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Who Wants to be a Millionaire: is this the new version or the old one? You may need to phone a friend. Photograph: ITV

Who Wants to be a Millionaire will have been on air for 12 years next month, and what was once groundbreaking, must-see television has been slowly turning into wallpaper: it's always on, nobody ever wins and nothing of any worth has happened since that major's wife had her coughing fit nine years ago. And so last night we got the debut of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire 2.0, featuring a clutch of new ideas that producers hope will rejuvenate the show without sending regular viewers running for the hills.

So the increasingly pointless Fastest Finger First round has been jettisoned, and there's a new lifeline – allowing the players to switch questions altogether after a certain point if they get stuck. But the biggest change is the addition of the countdown timer. Contestants no longer have the luxury of umming and aahing for hours over each question; from now on it's strictly against the clock. It's nothing revolutionary – everything from 24 to the Oxford Circus pedestrian crossings features a ticking clock to whip people into a state of unbearable tension – but it does seem to be a conscious effort on the part of the producers to inject a bit of zip.

Making changes to the format was always going to be difficult. Part of what originally made Who Wants to be a Millionaire so successful was its simplicity; something that many of its imitators failed to grasp. Compare an episode of Millionaire to an episode of, say, Golden Balls – impossible to follow unless you've got a PhD in particle physics, a 4,000-page rulebook and an unnatural fondness for Jasper Carrott – and the difference becomes crystal clear.

But perhaps the show's producers might have been a bit bolder. Despite the much-trailed alterations hardly anything about Who Wants to be a Millionaire has really changed – save the merest hint of a funky drumbeat in the titles. The set is the same, Chris Tarrant's inter-question patter still walks the same line between matey and disinterested, and the whole thing drips with the smell of business as usual. The changes certainly won't offend anyone, but they're so hopelessly conservative that you can't help but wonder what they're actually for.

So what did you make of the new Millionaire? Has the format been jazzed up sufficiently, or were you expecting more: like maybe flamethrowers or a sausage-making competition? Maybe you think the changes mark the last nail in the coffin, the final useless throw of the dice for a show that outlived its welcome long ago? Your comments below, please.

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